Reviews

I was looking to buy a new cheap 2 TB (terabyte) external hard drive on Black Friday to try and get the best deal. Target had a special on the Western Digital WD Elements 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop external hard drive (model - WDBAAU0020HBK-NESN) for just $69.00! A sweet deal for 2TB! However, when I went to pick one up they were gone and a Target employee told me they sold out in less than 15 minutes.

Every kid remembers playing with race cars with click-together race car tracks. But these race car tracks were typically boring oval or figure 8s with no hairpin turns or S curves. Well imagine you could design your own track using the Doodle Track kit to create the ultimate racing toy set.

Simply using a marker you draw the track and the race car will follow it automatically.

Christian Bongiovanni, co-CEO and CTO for Imagicle gave me a demo of SkyStone Video, which enables video conferencing everywhere to any video endpoint. Using SkyStone Video you can call any video endpoint using Skype, including Cisco/Tandberg, Lifesize, Polycom, Radvision, Sony, and others, enabling you to call video phones, video conferencing systems, and telepresence solutions. Guess this means the VoIP Videphone War is over!

To do the demo I simply went to their website and clicked this button (Note: you can do this too):
If you hover your mouse over the button above you'll see it's a Skype link.

The Sony Ericsson VH700 Bluetooth headset is an interesting Bluetooth headset, if only for the fact that it's not wireless. How can it be Bluetooth which is a wireless specification and yet not be wireless? Perhaps this picture of the VH700 will explain it best:

As you can see, the Sony Ericsson headset sports a small rectangular base unit controller with all of the user controls (power, volume up/down, charging connector) and it holds the battery, as well as a clip for attaching it to your clothing. Connected to the base unit controller is a wired ear-piece with a traditional earbud on the end.

You hover over the baggage claim area and claim a good spot close to the carousel door. You wait for your luggage to arrive - popping out through the conveyor belt doors - as your stress hormones and heart rate skyrocket with each passing moment you don't see your bag. Did my luggage make it? Is it still in good shape?

The Plantronics K100 In-Car Bluetooth speakerphone was launched today and I have an exclusive first look / review. Ever wish your car had an in-built speakerphone with full Bluetooth integration with your mobile phone? Ever hop in a friend's or family member's Mercedes, BMW, or Audi and watch them make a full-duplex phone call over their car's stereo speakers? Now you too can have this capability without shelling out $30,000+ for a premium vehicle.

I recently had a video interview with Phillipe Schwartz, CEO of ooVoo, to discuss how they stack up against Skype, ooVoo's technical architecture, their target market, and more. One difference off the bat is that ooVoo started with a SMB-focus, while Skype started with a consumer-focus and then Skype recently started targeting small to medium businesses,i.e. Skype for SIP now called Skype Connect. Phillipe claims ooVoo has an impressive 14 million users and 2-2.5 million downloads per month.

Interactive Intelligence sent me their new Interaction SIP Station to check out and review. It's an interesting little product that aims to replace big bulky desktop SIP phones with a simple little SIP-based Power over Ethernet (PoE) box that has a headset jack for connecting any standard headset. The obvious market is call centers where agents often take calls using a headset and a softphone application and have no need for a desktop phone with a full touch-tone keypad, speakerphone, handset, etc. In fact, often the handset stays cradled and the agent simply answers the call with the headset, which essentially means the desktop phone is a glorified PBX-to-headset converter.